That statue’s taking a bit of a liberty!
Mayor hits out after protester’s effigy appears on the plinth of toppled slaver
THE toppled statue of slave trader Edward Colston was illicitly replaced with a sculpture of a Black Lives Matter protester yesterday.
The secret operation was carried out at dawn by the artist Marc Quinn and a team of helpers. The work depicts Jen Reid who gave a black power salute on the empty plinth after Colston’s statue was thrown into Bristol harbour in June.
City mayor Marvin Rees yesterday questioned the move, saying the sculpture would be removed.
‘It was not requested and permission was not given for it to be installed,’ he said. ‘ The sculpture that has been installed today was the work and decision of a Londonbased artist.’
Entitled A Surge of Power (Jen Reid), it was erected by a team of ten in just 15 minutes using a hydraulic crane shortly before 5am. A cardboard placard reading ‘Black Lives still matter’ was placed below the black resin and steel artwork.
Quinn, 56, who made the statue of the disabled artist Alison Lapper in Trafalgar Square, said his latest creation was only temporary.
He added: ‘White people in positions of power need to speak up and support change in the way black people are treated, their positions in society.’
Mrs Reid, who was at the dawn event, said she had raised her fist in tribute to George Floyd, whose death in Minneapolis in May sparked a wave of anti-racism protests.
Insisting that she was not an activist, she said she felt an ‘overwhelming impulse’ to climb on top of the empty plinth despite a fear of heights.
A week after the protest she travelled to Quinn’s studio where she replicated her pose while being scanned by a 3D imaging machine made up of 201 cameras.
The statue of Colston, a merchant born in 1636, has been removed from the harbour and will be housed in a museum.
Mr Rees, who has set up a commission to address Bristol’s slavetrading past, said a new artwork should be chosen through a community consultation.
He also tweeted: ‘Anything put on the plinth outside of the process we’ve put in place will have to be removed.’
The mayor added: ‘This will be critical to building a city that is home to those who are elated at the statue being pulled down, those who sympathise with its removal but are dismayed at how it happened and those who feel that in its removal, they’ve lost a piece of the Bristol they know, and therefore themselves.’
Avon and Somerset Police officers have interviewed several people allegedly involved in removing the Colston statue.
‘Permission was not given’